Star Blazers Mod

[Suicide Junkie]

I had the game freeze up on me when the battleship was down to its last 100 hitpoints or so.
I was in windowed mode, and running under win98, so I had no problem end-tasking it.

I then reloaded from the autosave, and it worked fine.

[Campeador]

The reflex cannon and its satellites were dangerous. The Gamilons are really wicked puppies!

The freezing screen of death. Yes, I have experienced the same thing during testing. Except that it happened to me in Minerva (I have never found the Battleship at Pluto it is random, but yes, you will certainly will find it at Minerva). It is random, sometimes I finish the game without incident. I have been chasing a possible cause for the problem. It has happened with the WMG and also with others weapons. It freezes exactly at the moment the ship explodes (and only with the gamilon battleship). The Gamilon battleship has more firing points than any other ship, it has 22 firing points. That is alot of "candy". I do not know if the combination of the graphics of the explosions in addition firing of the weapons of the other ship can cause an overload on the computer system ram or video. Just for testing, one time I reduced the firing points on the Gamilon Battleship from 22 to 19 and the error never happened again. Then again maybe I did not try enough times.
I also noticed that when I play the game start to finish, the game seems to slow down or becomes a little erratic by the time I reach the part of destroying the Pluto base. Ussualy I save the game at that point, quit and reload, and then it seems fine.
Yet it is still a puzzle to me, I have chech the code but I still do not see anything that may cause it. But yes it does happens the moment the ship explodes, on the last killing blast. And sometimes nothing bad happens!
If the problem persist I can always try to either reduce the firing points on the Battleship, or how long the WMG beam last, or the graphics on the explosion itself.
Can you save the game, quit, and then load the game again and then take the Gamilon battleship down to see if it still happen? Also does it happen when the ship is close or far away?

[Suicide Junkie]

It could be the WMG beam time...
If the ship explodes and dissapears before the beam is done, then the beam dosen't know where one of its endpoints has gone.

[Q]

My mistake it was the Minerva not the Pluto system!

It seems to be exactely what you have seen too. The ship shows a few hitpoints left, is starting to explode and the game freezes. At that moment I cant't do anything but restart the computer. I went back to the last savegame and tried again. With the wave motion gun it happend again with other weapons I could destroy the battleship without problems.
Well at least I know now that it is not my system which causes the problem and I could finish the campaign after all.

[Campeador]

Ok, report on testing on game feezing when Gamilon Battleship is destroyed.

First of all, the comments on my previous post reflected the problems I was having the first time I created the Gamilon Battleship. Back then there was an error on the firing arcs or slots, something, I cant remember now what it was. The point is that I had it corrected back then and then never had a problem since. It was such a long time ago...like 2 months ago, like 2 weeks before I released the game here the first time.
On the second uptate, none of that was afected, just improved the firing arcs on most of the Gamilon ships that were off. Still no changes in anyting that may cause an error.

Now to the report:
StarBlazers Mod 1.1

My system: Athalon XP 2.17 GHz, 1.00 GB of Ram. Video card: Radeon 9800 pro 128Mb Ram.

I recreated the Minerva mission, first I destroyed 2 Gam Destroyers and then waited for the battleship to show up. Around a range of 500 I saved the game. (Every time I missed to hit the Gam BS with the WMC, I reloaded the game) I fired the WMC 9 times, I hit the Gam BS 6 times, not a single problem. I fired the WMG at a range of 160 to 180, and at a closer range of 50 to 90, not a problem either. There were also on the screen 2 destroyers, 2 cruisers, and 4 of my fighters flying around also on the screen. All went well.

I decided to try it on my old computer:

Pentium III XP 700 MHz, 320 Mb of Ram. Video Card: nVidia Riva TNT 2 Pro, 32Mb Ram
(Boy was that a jerky ride...not as smooth as my newer pc)

Same as before except that I just evaded the two destroyers and waited for the Gam BS. I fired the WMG 9 times, I missed 6 times (provably because I had far less experience this time), I hit 3 times, destroying the Gam BS, at diferent ranges, It was slow and jerky as hell, but it did not freeze!

So I tried in two very diferent rigs, and found no problems. That was a combined test of 9 hits without freezing. What can I say now, make sure you have the latest video drivers, directx (9.0c), Media player(10). Maybe the problem is diferent from pc to pc since they all have diferent configurations. Also In my test I had the game loaded fresh in Minerva.

If you are bored enough, and have the time, just do the same test I did and let me know.

[Lancefighter]

Nice mod you have going here. i found some stuff on the internet, i was looking for bsg stuff though, i thing it is the right ships
i cant get the url thing to work so
http://www.shipschematics.net/yamato/

[Campeador]

Thanks Lancefighter,
Yes I am aware of that site. While doing reserch on the ships, I did purchase a book called "Star Blazers - Technical Manual". Good book, it has identical drawings as the site you mentioned, in addition of weapon descriptions, story, etc. so they provably copy it from that book (printed on 1998), but at least the site saved me the trouble of having to scan each picture of the ships I wanted, since it was easier to just print from the drawings from that site.
I am also grateful for many online sites were I could download some pic's, music, as well as the creator of "SFSlotModder"(that program made things easier), and the few tutorials right here on this forum about how to use some of the different drawing programs, which by the way I almost quit after messing with it for two weeks.
The story about my ships, I have never made a space ship until I started this game. I hapen to have a "CAD" program, I also have acess to 3dMax, in addition to a few other 3D free programs, the problem was that even thought I do have them, I have never used them before, and I was not willing to spend 6+ months learning "3DMax" which is very complex and intimidating. The only program I know how to use is the one I learned in college called "Solidworks".
The problem was that it does not transfer files into the X format. So I created it in "Solidworks" into an "IGS" format, from there I transfered into "3dMax" into "3ds" format, from there I transfered into "anim8or", and from there into "LithUnwrap". I spent 3 weeks creating my first ship the "Yamato". It came out very good in "Solidworks", but by the time I was done with the transfering, the ship was transparent, and with holes (missing sides). Not good. At that point I quit the project for a week. Fooling around with 3dMax I discovered that it has a feature to patch the holes, but at the same time it distorted any round part. I quit for another week totally frustrated.
To make the story short, I made 3 or 4 versions of the "Yamato", it went from very realistic to the one you see on the game, ok for the game, but not the beauty I originaly created. I had to make them using angles, no round parts for them to work. (None of the ships have a single round part). Well except for the cannons, they came out ok since the distortion is hard to notice and they are small, and I needed the cannons. Anyway the ships are not exact or perfect, far from it, at very least I wanted to capture a good resemblance, I simplyfied them alot also to make the files smaller. It is funny, 3 weeks on the first ship, and the last 3 ships in one day.
I do not even want to talk about skin painting, another nightmare.
By the way as you start the game, the starting ship you can see it on a 3d window rotating, my ships do not work on that window for some reason, that is why I had to start the game with one of the ships of the original game. If I were to use any of my ships as the origimal ship the game will crash. I am actually amazed that I was able to make the game by bypassing the problems and moving on, instead of finding a solution, that at the time I could not solve.
Good luck hunting for the bsg stuff.

[Campeador]

Heads up!
The second part of the "StarBlazers Mod" (which will conclude the "The Quest for Iscandar" story) is going well. I just finish creating the last ship and I am starting to code them into the game. There are going to be over 12 new designs (there were 13 original designs on the first part). So that's a total of over 24 ships when all combined! Between the new ones there are going to be 5 new Gamilon fighters, in addition to new Carriers, Destroyers, Battleships, Cruisers, and a few other surprises.
Now that the ships are done, things should start speeding up. The story is already 50% done, and I hope to finish it between the next 2 weeks, and maybe another 2 weeks for testing and bug hunting, totaling one month (That is assuming that all goes well). This second part is going to be a little bit longer than part one (but not by much), but still fast and to the point as the first one.
As the story goes the solar system is free of Gamilons for the moment (part one), thanks to the "Star Force" and their ship the "Yamato". At the start of the second part of the game, the Star Force is leaving their solar system for the first time, and going into the unknown, through the dreaded Gamilon sector in rout to "Iscandar". "Leader Desslok" have assigned a more competent general to deal with "the little matter called the Star Force"; his name is "General Lysis". How good is he? That will be for you to judge...

[Q]

Good news. I look forward to play the second part.
Thank you again for your work Campeador.

[Captain Kwok]

After being pasted by the Gamilon in one of SE:IV pbw games - I'm looking to return the favour in this new campaign!